Online Advertising

In the last big Matt Cutts interview, Eric Enge managed to get Matt Cutts to say PageRank Sculpting (or siloing for you Bruce Clay fans) was okay to do on your site and that noindex pages still have PageRank attributed to them.Well . . . Eric Enge did another ...

Lately I have been reading about online behavioral analysis and have started to realize its potential for advertising. To better understand its power try this simple exercise. Open a new window, go to Google and search “malpractice”. Then right away search “lawyer”. Look at the ads on the right. You li...

I was browsing on Technorati today (mostly because Google Blog Search has gone down the toilet in the past 3 weeks) and came across one of the first banner ads to have caught my attention in years:
Now, I'll admit, I'm a complete si...

Everybody in the SEO world knows that SMX West starts tomorrow but, while I'm definitely looking forward to seeing some familiar faces in Santa Clara, I'm currently in Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit. Why, you may ask, are you attending Affiliate Summit, Scott, SEOmoz isn't invol...

A report on the "Natural Born Clickers" (NBCs from now on) was released today by Starcom, Tacoda & Hitwise. The data points to some head-scratchingly bizarre figures about the people who click on paid display advertisements (emphasis below mine):
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Note: The following post is based on conversations I have had with top Microsoft employees and college graduates being recruited by Facebook. The conclusions I have come up with are based on the information they gave me along with many hours of independent research. Although the following is speculative in nature, it is based on fact.
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I'm about to bring up something I've written about before (one month ago today, actually), but today I've taken part in an interesting task that further highlights the disconnect between advertising and search engine marketing. I saw a funny ad on the bus today while I was on my way to work. I really wanted to take out ...

Every time I research something using classified sites, I'm surprised at two things: Firstly, very few people understand the first rule about writing online advertisements, which has to be getting people to click on the ad. Secondly, it surprises me that even thought I know some of the ads might contain great content, I rarely click on ads that are badly worded. Surely I've been doing this long en...

It's the second of January and those of us in the United States are already pretty tired of hearing about November's Presidential Election. I'm sure the rest of you are, too. The world of social media is already flooded with stories about the U.S.'s political dramas and I can only imagine that if you're in any other country, today's offerings at Reddit might not interest you all that much. Current...

Bryan Eisenberg pinged me this week and asked if SEOmoz would participate in their latest contest - "My Hyperlink Can Beat Your HyperLink." It's not just fun, it's participatory, engaging, and incredibly valuable - both from a learning perspective and for the winner. Here are the details:
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This blog post is going to take on a very simple format: first of all I’m going to present my landing page as a “good cop persuader” and refer to the work of Gerry Spence. Then, I’m going to present my landing page as more of a “bad cop salesman” and refer to the work of Dr Robert Cialdini.&nbs...

We're now one full week on from the results of the SEOmoz "Landing Page Contest," and I've printed out all of your comments... sat down... read through them twice... I've highlighted, I've underlined, and I've thought very carefully.The result? I've decided I'm going to write a couple of posts for "YouMoz" (this is the first).Before I get started, I ...

In the world of web search, we often recoil in disgust at the thought of buying advertising on the Internet. Likewise, I often hear web enterpreneurs and search marketers decry the lack of value in traditional web advertising - banner ads, overlays, pop-ups, etc. However, there are ways it can be done effectively, and I've got a few examples to share. These are my personal favorites - not only ...

Patrick Sexton (aka feedthebot) over at SEOish contacted a few big names in the search marketing industry and asked: "What would you do if you only had 100 dollars to market your website?" This excellent read includes responses from Aaron Wall, Andy Beal, Andy Hagans, Kid Disco, Lee Odden, Tod...

We have some, well, buddies over at BuddyTV, so I was interested to see that they were AuctionAds' May Publisher of the Month. "Good for them," I thought, before going, "Wait, what's AuctionAds?"
Yeah, yeah, don't make fun of me. So I...

Mystery Guest and I arrived in New York on Saturday and have been enjoying the city tremendously. During our stay, I've been conducting a remarkable number of searches to find museums, shows, restaurants and shopping. One site has consistently dominated the results at Google and, as an SEO, I couldn't be more impressed - NYMag.com has done a remarkable job bui...

Rather than simply list my opinion, or a list, let's make it democratic. I've created a short list of the Top 10 overlooked tactics I see in the professional search marketing sphere. These aren't the mistakes that websites make when trying to appeal to search engines, but rather, the omissions that we, as professional marketers and consultants, let pass by.
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Intuit recently authored a report on the state of US businesses in 2017 - Future of Small Business Report - in which they suggest that by 2017, the number of unique businesses will triple. SmallBusinessHub...

Jeff, Scott and I had a lengthy, post-work discussion today about online advertising today. We discussed the usual issues:
The more you use the web, the more immune you are to advertising
AdSense (and YPN) prey on the naivete of users - savvy visitors don't click these
It's very, very hard to find a good advertising model on the web
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